It is evident to anyone that Donald Trump, in his capacity as president, has been a fantastic boon for the state of Israel. During Trump’s presidency from 2017 to 2021, Israel — under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party — experienced an unprecedented procession of strategic and symbolic victories, all orchestrated by the Trump White House in coordination with Israel:
- The torpedoing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the Iran deal, which sought to de-escalate tensions between Iran and the West through the regulated dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program. The JCPOA was vehemently opposed by Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of whom favor military action and harsh economic sanctions against Iran. Trump ordered the withdrawal from the deal little more than a week after Netanyahu delivered the “Iran Lied” speech, in which he presented ostensible proof in the form of Iranian intelligence documents that Iran was not in compliance with the JCPOA. Additionally, the Trump administration placed “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran and officially designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization. This regime change operation was conducted under the umbrella of the Iran Action Group, headed by Mike Pompeo and Brian Hook.
- The American-Israeli drone strike assassination of Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani, the long-time commander of the Quds Force, the branch of the IRGC specializing in unconventional warfare and military intelligence operations, including Iranian coordination with proxy organizations Hezbollah and Hamas. The elimination of Soleimani, described as a “genius of asymmetric warfare” and “the single most powerful operative in the Middle East,” had long been a prime strategic objective of Israel’s. Israel attempted to assassinate Soleimani at least twice — once in 2015 and again in 2019 — but both attempts were foiled. Intelligence sharing and cooperation between Israel and the U.S., whose baseline is very high in general, expanded even further during the Trump administration.
- The United States’ recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the strategic Golan Heights, and its declaration of the legality of the Israeli policy of expanding Jewish settlements into the West Bank under international law, both drastic divergences from long-standing U.S. policy. Benjamin Netanyahu arranged a gesture of gratitude to Trump for this policy coup by arranging to have a new Golan Heights settlement named after Trump.
- The normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Arab states of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain through the US-mediated Abraham Accords, with the tacit backing of Israeli ally Saudi Arabia. This effort was widely recognized as an effort to counter Iranian influence in the Middle East.
- The recognition of deeply contentious Jerusalem as the official, undivided capital of Israel by the United States, in addition to the movement of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This had been another highly significant aim of Israel. The Trump administration completely abandoned the consensus of American foreign policy with regard to Jerusalem since 1948, that the future of Jerusalem must be the subject of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
- The attempted two-state “resolution” of the Israel-Palestine conflict in what was called the “Middle East Peace Plan”. In reality, the doomed plan, which received no input from Palestinians, and was immediately rejected by Palestine and Israeli settlers, proposed an extremely weak and fractured Palestinian state, and was a smokescreen for the eventual Israeli annexation of the Jordan Valley and most of the West Bank. In a 2016 interview, incoming U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, stated that Donald Trump would support the Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank.
- The cessation of US funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and the closure of the PLO office in Washington, D.C.
- The first visitation of an sitting US president to the Kotel (otherwise known as the Wailing Wall), a site venerated by Jews as the sole remnant of the ancient Temple of Jerusalem.
- The broadening of the interpretation of Title VI of the US 1964 Civil Rights Act to include discrimination based on ‘anti-Semitism’ by allowing the government to interpret Judaism as both a race or nationality, and a religion under federal law.
- The pardoning of Jonathan Pollard’s handler, former Israeli Air Force colonel Aviem Sella, at the request of Benjamin Netanyahu.
I want to tell you that the Jewish people have a long memory, so we remember the proclamation of the great king, Cyrus the Great, the Persian king 2,500 years ago. He proclaimed that the Jewish exiles in Babylon could come back and rebuild our Temple in Jerusalem. We remember a hundred years ago, Lord Balfour, who issued the Balfour Proclamation that recognized the rights of the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland. We remember 70 years ago, President Harry S. Truman was the first leader to recognize the Jewish state. And we remember how a few weeks ago, President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Mr. President, this will be remembered by our people through the ages. — Benjamin Netanyahu
No U.S. president since ultra-Zionist Lyndon Baines Johnson has been as enmeshed and at unity with Israeli and Jewish interests as Donald Trump. Multiple high-ranking Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, have likened Trump to Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who — as legend has it —facilitated the movement of Jewish exiles from Babylon to Jerusalem so that they could establish the Second Temple of Jerusalem. In Isaiah, God chooses Cyrus “to subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armor … so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel.”
In particular, Trump has been affiliated with a disproportionately Russian anti-communist faction of Jewry with deep ties to transnational organized crime and maximalist goals with respect to the state of Israel. This bizarre symbiosis precedes his 2015 ascension to political prominence by decades.
Furthermore, declassified 2018 FBI documents unambiguously demonstrate that Israeli agents assisted Trump in winning the 2016 presidential election, and that Trump met in-person with said Israeli agents on at least one occasion during the 2016 election cycle.
Coin minted by Israeli religious nonprofit, Mikdash Center, depicting Trump and Cyrus on the front, and the Temple of Jerusalem on the back
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